As rural states nationwide struggle with cuts in education funding, declining enrollments and increased costs it becomes crucial to examine those schools that are successful in educating their students. These higher performing schools can then be used as models for education excellence throughout the state. Defining higher-performing is not an easy venture and there are as many opinions of what constitutes higher-performing as there are organizations reporting on higher-performing schools. Why all this focus on school performance? One major factor has been PL 107-110 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation requiring a higher level of accountability for schools than ever before from a federal standpoint. Schools and School Districts are given a report card each year and States are required to disseminate information on school and district performance to parents each year. With the increase in focus on school level accountability and the ability of the internet to disseminate information with ease, several organizations are beginning to study what variables influence school performance. This paper compares the higher performing school studies of Just For The Kids (part of the National Center for Educational Accountability), and The Center for Education Policy Applied Research and Evaluation (at the University of Southern Maine) in order to open a discourse on what exactly determines higher-performing and what high schools in Maine truly are models of academic achievement. (Contains 3 tables and 2 figures.)